Ever wondered what "Star Wars" smuggler-turned hero of the Alliance Chewbacca would get up to if he had to battle one of his fellow Wookiees in a "Street Fighter"-inspired brawl on the beach? Or what if the beloved Wookiee took a hard turn into a gritty life of shotgun-toting crime?

Okay, maybe you haven't wondered that, but Portland-based artist and photographer Mako Miyamoto has, creating a collection of photo series depicting the Wookiee having fun and up to no good around his hometown.

In an interview with the New York Daily News, Miyamoto explained that the project--which began in 2011, was born out of growing up alongside the "Star Wars" franchise as well as his fascination with masks. Speaking with The Daily News, he said "Masks have always intrigued me; being born near Halloween may have had something to do with it."

When you look at some of the images in the "Heist" series--depicting gunmen wearing big-eyed Wookie masks--you feel like there's a step removed: it's not about the "Star Wars" reference, so much as it is about people in these fierce masks doing these intense things. I'm not sure what the intent of the '70s veneer on most of the photos is, save to make the ones featuring hard-boiled crime seem more intense, but it's interesting, nonetheless.

It's really only the "Street Fighter" images that seem out of place, layering on two bits of pop culture where one would have done, kind of stripping the meaning from both like one of those "Adventure Time"/"Game of Thrones" mashup shirts which are frankly, not my thing.